Kiwis love ethnic food and thousands of ethnic people across New Zealand are involved in cooking up a taste of home to meet this need. But if you run a food business in Auckland then you should be aware of significant changes to the Food Act and how these may affect you.

The Food Act is a new law which introduces significant improvements to the way that food safety is managed by food businesses across New Zealand. The new rules provide a fresh approach to businesses who will be given guidance to manage food safety for themselves.

If you own a business that sells food, the new law will require you to make changes to ensure that the food you supply to your customers is safe and suitable to eat.Auckland Council is working with businesses in the food service sector – cafes, restaurants, takeaways and off-site caterers now. If you are registered with Auckland Council now is a good time to find out more information about how to use new Food Control Plans – a Food Control plan is a tool you will use in your business to monitor how you cook and store food, check general hygiene matters on a regular basis and so on.

The council is keen to work with owners of food businesses to help them achieve compliance with the new law and mentoring sessions and support from Environmental Health staff is available now. These sessions are also being run in Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean. To find out more, please visit aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/food

Selwyn Manning, BCS (Hons.) MCS (Hons.) is an investigative political journalist with 23 years media experience. He specializes in reportage and analysis of socioeconomics, politics, foreign affairs, and security/intelligence issues.
Selwyn has extensive experience as a commentator and has provided live political analysis to a wide range of television and radio organizations broadcasting in New Zealand, Australia and globally including the BBC (Five Live, London) and BBC (World Service). He is currently a correspondent to Australia's FiveAA radio, and is a regular live-on-air panelist on Radio New Zealand's The Panel with broadcaster Jim Mora.